President of the Treasury Board, Jean-Yves Duclos says he has “a good degree of confidence” in Canada’s ability to exit the recession created by the novel coronavirus outbreak. “The alternative, if we didn’t do this, would be depression,” he explained. “A depression is a recession which is a lot longer and a lot deeper than a recession and with consequences for the coffer that would be even greater.” He said if the government didn’t act quickly, unemployment would increase further, wages would drop and the deficit and debt would “increase rapidly.” “And we are acting quickly, again, to avoid moving from a recession, in which we are obviously finding ourselves now, towards a depression,” he said.